Interpreting Nightingales: Gender, Class and HistoriesA&C Black, 1997 M07 1 - 299 pages The poetic nightingale is so familiar it seems hardly to merit serious attention. Yet its ubiquity is significant, suggesting associations with erotic love, pathos and art that cross culture and history. This book examines the different nightingales of European literature, starting with the Greek myth of Philomela, the raped girl, silenced by having her tongue cut out, and then transformed into the bird whose name means poet, poetry and nightingale simultaneously. Moving from the classical to the Christian worlds, Jeni Williams discusses nightingales and nature in the early church and sees the emergence of the figure as an emotive emblem of the aristocracy in mediaeval vernacular debate poetry. Her final chapters use the nightingale and the myth to examine Elizabeth Barrett Browning's struggle for an active female voice in Victorian poetry. |
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Page 12
... lovers and sometimes acting as a confidant . Though associated with love poetry , he is not a figure of the aesthetic . Hatto attempts to qualify the difference between the masculine and feminine forms that this figure of love takes by ...
... lovers and sometimes acting as a confidant . Though associated with love poetry , he is not a figure of the aesthetic . Hatto attempts to qualify the difference between the masculine and feminine forms that this figure of love takes by ...
Page 37
... lover , both are written in the vernacular , and both thus evoke debates over gender and class . * 3 The vernacular debates form the subject matter of my next chapter , in which I seek to complicate Joplin's analysis ( the estab ...
... lover , both are written in the vernacular , and both thus evoke debates over gender and class . * 3 The vernacular debates form the subject matter of my next chapter , in which I seek to complicate Joplin's analysis ( the estab ...
Page 53
... day ( rather than the darkness of night ) this bird is closely identified with the erotic pursuits of human lovers.52 During the eleventh century new amalgams started to appear between. Christian Nightingales : The Sacred to the Erotic 53.
... day ( rather than the darkness of night ) this bird is closely identified with the erotic pursuits of human lovers.52 During the eleventh century new amalgams started to appear between. Christian Nightingales : The Sacred to the Erotic 53.
Page 59
... lovers , the go - between who bears messages from heart to heart . He has a right to his place , for in France his coming , like that of the swallow in Greece , the stork in Germany , and the cuckoo in England , is the signal to the ...
... lovers , the go - between who bears messages from heart to heart . He has a right to his place , for in France his coming , like that of the swallow in Greece , the stork in Germany , and the cuckoo in England , is the signal to the ...
Page 60
... lovers dancing to the pipers as tragic just because ' the nightingale more sweetly sings / A descant to their caperings ' — associations with the fetes de mai are more pertinent . The figure cannot be divorced from its class- determined ...
... lovers dancing to the pipers as tragic just because ' the nightingale more sweetly sings / A descant to their caperings ' — associations with the fetes de mai are more pertinent . The figure cannot be divorced from its class- determined ...
Contents
| 7 | |
| 9 | |
| 16 | |
| 34 | |
Medieval English Nightingales | 75 |
Victorian Nightingales | 142 |
Barrett Browning among the Nightingales | 169 |
Nightingales in Classical Literature | 226 |
Christian Latin Poems | 236 |
Notes | 247 |
Bibliography | 284 |
Index of Names and Titles | 294 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alcuin ambiguity appears argument aristocratic Aristophanes associated attempts Aurora Leigh Barrett Browning Barrett Browning's Bianca bird boundaries C.S. Lewis Caterina century chapter Chaucer chivalric Christian classical conflict courtly critics Cuckoo cultural daisy debate defined denies desire discussion disruption Elizabeth Barrett Browning emblematic English erotic expressed female feminine figure Floure Flower Fulbert of Chartres gender genre Greek harmony hoopoe human identity ideology individual ingale Knight's Tale Lady language Latin Leaf Leaf company literature Lost Bower lover lyric male masculine medieval medieval literature Mermin narrator natural world night nightin nightingale Ovid passion past patterns Patterson Paulus Albarus Pecham's Philomela myth poem poet poetic voice points political Procne reader references relation religious repression role secular sexual significance silence social song Sophocles space speak stanza structure symbolic Tereus textual Thrush tion trans University Press verse victim Victorian poetry woman women writing